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It's a lazy Oakland afternoon, and I'm sitting in the sun chatting with Andi Zeisler and Debbie Rasmussen about their shared charge, Bitch magazine. Bearing the tagline "Feminist Response to Pop Culture," Bitch is the rag of choice for third-wave feminists who indulge in pop culture and need a safe space to deconstruct it. Jane magazine, porn, chick lit, Burger King commercials, Jem and the Holograms, reality television ... this is a mere sliver of the subjects that have been enthusiastically skewered and thoughtfully explored in recent issues. (Full disclosure: my writing has turned up in the pages of Bitch.)

Cofounder, editor, and creative director Zeisler explains: "Me and cofounder Lisa Jervis, we basically were wage slaves in Oakland. She worked at a bookstore, and I worked at an art supply store, and what we did in our free time was consume pop culture. Bitch came from our frustration at the representation of women and men in pop culture."

Published four times a year and now boasting full-color covers with eye-catching artwork, Bitch began in the mid-’90s as a regular old zine — xeroxed, with a Sharpied cover and a hand-stapled spine, and sold at local zine purveyors.

"Zines were really happening then," Zeisler recalls. "We went to this panel at the Media Alliance, 'How to Publish a Zine.' We didn't know anything. We didn't know about distribution or how much paper costs. But the crucial thing about the Bay Area is it's such a nurturing place to be DIY. You walk into City Lights, and there's a wall of zines. It feels really accessible."

Beginning with an initial print run of 300, Bitch took off when, with the help of supportive Bay Area indie booksellers, it scored distribution from magazine distro Big Top. "Eventually, each issue the circulation grew," Zeisler recounts. "We had sort of suspected there were a lot of people with the same frustrations and the same love-hate of pop culture we had. Around the fourth issue we started getting a lot of submissions from people who had seen the magazine and wanted to write for it."

In 2001, after a period of financial struggle, Bitch gained status as a nonprofit entity, allowing the magazine to seek new avenues of fiscal support and providing Zeisler and publisher Rasmussen with the tools to implement a new kind of business practice. "We do publish under a different model," Rasmussen concedes. "The biggest thing is, any profits that are left over at the end of the year" — "Insert laughter," Zeisler interjects sarcastically — "would just go back into the organization instead of being distributed to the people who work for the magazine."

Another big difference is advertising. In an industry where ad space tends to trump content, Bitch gives minimal room to ads — and promotes small, feminist-minded enterprises like midwifery schools and companies selling natural menstrual products. The magazine solicits donations from subscribers to help keep it afloat and growing. Writer, performer, and culture heroine Sandra Tsing Loh recently bought out the back page herself, running a love letter to the magazine in lieu of an advertisement.

Another notable moment in Bitch back-cover history was the full-color vibrator ad that earned the magazine some upset readers and threatening letters from the post office. "It was an interesting debate, because it did call into question, what does the ...